19 th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON INTEGRATED OPTICS 1 The Germanium Zener-Emitter for Silicon Photonics Roman Koerner, * Daniel Schwarz, Caterina Clausen, Michael Oehme, Inga A. Fischer, and Joerg Schulze Institute of Semiconductor Engineering, University of Stuttgart Pfaffenwaldring 47, Stuttgart, 70569 Germany. *Email: [email protected] Si-Photonic transceivers are classified by their operating wavelength, power consumption and integration in Si to sustain cost-effectiveness. Applying Ge as optical active material in a Zener-Emitter structure, has proven to provide a competitive solution for the integrated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) on Si [1]. We further exploit the usage of a Ge Zener tunnel diode for electrical pumping (Fig. 1), to achieve population inversion and stimulated emission in an indirect semiconductor material at room temperature by direct Zener band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) [2] (Fig. 2). We conclude to present electrical pumped lasing in a 1 mm waveguide at 90 mA (5 kA/cm²) and for the first time mono-mode lasing in a 3.2 mm waveguide at 110 mA (60 kA/cm²) with maximum output power of the SOA of 1.65 mW (Fig. 3). Fig. 1. (left) Two-terminal Zener-Emitter formed by cleaving the rip-waveguide. (middle) SEM-image of the Si-Ge-Si heterostructure with strained relaxed Ge by a SiGe virtual substrate. (right) MBE-Layer sequence with the Zener p-n tunnel diode for electron pumping and p-i-n diode for hole injection. The device provides complete state-of-the-art CMOS process integration by 550 nm device layer thickness.